TRUE

NASA has officially confirmed the presence of water ice at the lunar south pole through several decades of satellite observations and impact missions 2 8. Early evidence emerged from the Clementine mission in 1994 12 and the 1998 Lunar Prospector mission, which detected high hydrogen concentrations in permanently shadowed regions 1. In 2009, NASA's LCROSS mission provided further proof after intentionally crashing a probe into a south pole crater, revealing water in the resulting plume 10. Definitive confirmation of surface water ice was announced in 2018 based on data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), which identified the distinctive way ice molecules absorb infrared light 2 5. This ice is primarily located in permanently shadowed craters where temperatures never rise above minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit 2 4 6.